PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1926 on Lot 13 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: attorney George Curtis De Garmo
  • Architect: George F. Barber & Sons
  • On September 22, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. and Mrs. George C. De Garmo permits for an eight-room, two-story house and a one-story, 18-by-32-foot garage at 508 Rimpau Boulevard
  • George F. Barber is not to be confused with the prolific George Franklin Barber (1854-1915), an architect who worked nearly 2,000 miles to the east in Knoxville, but whose designs were hardly confined to that Tennessee city. George Franklin Barber's pattern books of designs had wide distribution; through them, he sold his plans to builders all over the country as well as overseas. One remaining example in Los Angeles is at 1140 West Adams Boulevard
  • Born in Seattle on October 31, 1873, and raised in Los Angeles, Curtis De Garmo received his law degree from Cal in 1897. He'd met Battle Creek–born Florence Jones at Los Angeles High School and became closer to her in college, where, per the Times, she was considered "one of the prettiest and wittiest girls of Berkeley, and he a handsome and bright young student." They settled into a Pasadena bungalow he'd built for them after their marriage in Los Angeles on December 28, 1904, though after a few years they decided to build a new house in the city at 823 South Catalina Street, for which she was issued a building permit on August 10, 1908. The De Garmos moved into the new house with her widowed mother, Inez Jones, the three remaining there until moving into 508 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Inez Jones died at 508 Rimpau Boulevard on June 2, 1930
  • Curtis and Florence De Garmo remained at 508 Rimpau until separating by early 1940; the house was on the market that February with classified ads noting that it "must be sold." (Being prior to 1948, when the U.S. Supreme Court that held in Shelley v. Kraemer that racially restrictive real estate covenants violated the Fourteenth Amendment, the agent's ads also noted that 508 was in a restricted section "assuring permanent values.") The house was still on the market in late summer 1940, when ads called the house "a beautiful home built to order for its present owner" and cited an asking price of $22,500 "for sacrifice sale."  On April 10, 1941, the Times carried a notice that Florence J. De Garmo had been granted a divorce from her husband. Curtis moved to a rented apartment on Detroit Street and then to the Ambassador Hotel; Florence moved into the Hollywood cottage owned by her chum Miss Bertha Green, a longtime Hollywood High School Latin teacher who became Dean of Women at Los Angeles City College in 1929, serving until reirement in 1943. The ladies lived together into the 1950s
  • Real estate investor and manager Edwin Victor Fallgren and his, née Ruby Eaton, were the next owners of 508 Rimpau Boulevard
  • On November 27, 1940, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. Fallgren a permit to add a 10-by-27½-foot room to the rear center of 508 Rimpau Boulevard. The Fallgrens hired architect Wesley W. Eager to design the addition; Eager was a son of A. Wesley Eager, one of Los Angeles's leading residential architects of the early 1900s
  • The Fallgrens built a weekend house in Palm Springs in 1947. They would leave 508 by 1949 to live temporarily in a house they owned on "Beverly Hills Adjacent" Arnaz Drive while awaiting the completion of their new Hancock Park residence at 160 South Hudson Place, which they began building in the spring of 1950. (That house would be demolished in 1997 and replaced with a stucco box two years later)
  • The next family to occupy 508 Rimpau Boulevard would stay for 45 years. Investment broker Robert Prince Casey and his wife, née Marie Clarkson, both Missouri-born, moved into the house by early 1950 with their son Palmer and daughter Marie. On February 11, 1956, Marie married Rogg Collins of Beverly Hills in the chapel of All Saints' Episcopal Church there; a reception followed at 508 Rimpau. Still living there, Robert Casey, Cal '19 and an inveterate clubman, died on Halloween 1968 at the age of 71. Marie Casey appears to have moved into an apartment soon after becoming a widow, the Collinses taking over 508 and beginning significant renovations
  • Marie and Rogg Collins had been living at 526 North Las Palmas Avenue in Hancock Park since the late '50s and had two sons, William Rogg Collins and Whitley Casey Collins, the latter's first name that of his paternal grandfather
  • On January 8, 1969, Rogg Collins, named as owner on the document, was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety  for a 3-by-17-foot second-floor addition to the rear of the house to add two bedrooms and a bath. A certificate of occupancy was granted for this alteration on June 19, nine days after the Times reported that the family had moved in the week before. On August 8, Rogg Collins was issued a permit to move the original garage forward onto a new foundation; on September 3, a permit was issued suggesting that a completely new garage was built on the new foundation instead. The Casey/Collins occupancy of 508 would last until the late 1990s, with a final building permit having been issued to Rogg Collins on October 30, 1995, for chimney repairs
  • Owners of 508 Rimpau Boulevard in recent decades have done periodic remodelings of the kitchen and baths, and in recent years have carried out extensive interior alterations. A pool and spa have been added to the southeast corner of the property


Illustration: Private Collection